The Pools

by Bethan Roberts

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So you’re my girlfriend.’

  ‘My dad left.’

  He puts his hand in my hair, the way he did in the woods at Shotton Hill. Working his fingers around my scalp, he says, ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ I say, pulling away from his hand. ‘My dad left.’

  ‘My dad crashed the car. My dad never came back.’

  I sit there, earrings dangling. Shane stares into the air above me. The line of his chin is strong. The dipping curve of his open lips is still. He doesn’t allow his face to twitch as I watch him.

  ‘Do you miss him?’ I ask.

  He doesn’t allow one blink, even though his hair hangs over the side of his face like a strange eyepatch.

  ‘My dad was the only sane one in our house,’ I say.

  Shane gives a nod.

  ‘What was yours like?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Don’t you remember?’

  ‘No.’

  There’s a long silence before he says, ‘There’s no point missing them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Everything’s their fault. And when they go it’s still their fault. It’s all his fault.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Anything you bloody well like.’

  I start to laugh, but Shane’s not smiling. He’s biting his lip, hard.

  I wiggle my bare toes, but he doesn’t look at them. I blink at him and smile, but he keeps staring at the space above my head.

  ‘Shall we have some music?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘What do you fancy?’

  He has no answer.

  It’s hot in the shed. My palms are sweating. When I bring a hand up to sweep the hair from my face, I see a small patch of damp on the wooden floor.

  ‘Do you fancy anything, Shane?’

  Again, no answer.

  So I stand up. ‘I could take off my skirt. Shall I take off my skirt?’

  I start to wonder if he’s heard me. ‘Do you want me to – ’ ‘OK.’

  Staring at the wooden slats behind me, eyes half closed, he repeats, ‘OK,’ and not a muscle on him moves as he waits for me to remove my denim mini.

  ‘Shall we lock the door?’ I ask.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘In case.’

  ‘No.’ He pauses, nods his head. ‘Go on, then.’

  Beneath my bare feet, the floorboards of the shed are warm. A cake crumb squishes between my toes. I shove my fingers down into my waistband. Shane keeps his eyes below my waist. His big lower lip hangs down so low I can see the spit on his teeth.

  I tug the skirt down over my hips. I look at the net curtain behind Shane. I think about how white that curtain is. How clean.

  I push the skirt over my thighs. I think about Shane’s mum washing the net every week, pegging the rough wet fabric to the whirligig. I think about the whipping sound it might make as it kicks out in the wind.

  There’s a clunk as the rivets of the skirt hit the floor.

  I flick a look at Shane, who seems focused on my knees. He breathes slowly, deliberately, taking a breath in, letting it go.

  I cough out a giggle. Shane doesn’t move.

  Fixing my eyes back on the curtain, I grab the side-strings of my knickers and pull them to my knees. I never wear the wrong knickers to Shane’s. I always choose the small black pair with the lace trim. I have to bend down a bit to get them off my feet.

  The warm air licks around me. Every bit of me suddenly has a pulse. I slip my hands into the curve above my hips, run my tongue along my top lip, taste chocolate, and wait.

  But he makes no sound, no movement, no nothing.

  I look at him. His eyes seem to be closed. But then I realise he’s looking down at my toes. I’m standing here with just a T-shirt brushing the tops of my hips and he’s sitting, staring at my toes. Taking in each red painted toenail.

  So I turn round, slowly, like I did in the pink pencil skirt. But this time he can take in each bit of leg, thigh, arse. I pause and concentrate. Perhaps I’ll feel his breath on my skin. Perhaps it will be wet. Perhaps he’ll put a big hand on me. Perhaps he’ll move for me, reach out and pull me over, pull me to him.

  But when I’ve turned all the way round, his hands are clasped on his knees, and they’re white and dead looking. His curls fall over his eyes as his head drops lower.

  I pick up my knickers, pull up my skirt. Shane doesn’t move from his chair.

  ‘I’m not your girlfriend,’ I say. And I open the shed door.

  seven

  September, 1985

  He stays over a couple of times before he moves in. I never hear them at it because I go right down under the covers, put my fingers in my ears and breathe through my mouth so all I get is the air moving in my head like a big sea. The door goes, their laughter creeps up the stairs, and I go under.

  His name’s Simon. In the morning, he’s there at our breakfast table, beaming behind his packet of Alpen. Mum goes out and buys that for him because he says he can’t eat bacon and eggs. ‘Pinch an inch!’ he says, digging a tiny roll of flesh out of his waistband. ‘Roughage. That’s what you need in the morning, Jan.’ She nods as if she knows what he means.

  I’ve done something about this in Home Economics, so I speak up. ‘Fibre, that’s what they call it now.’

  He lets go of his bit of stomach. ‘Is it now? Same difference, though. New word, same difference. Like spastic and person with cerebral palsy. See?’ He winks at Mum. ‘She’s a feisty one, Jan!’ He puts one hand on my arm and leans towards me. ‘Don’t let anyone change that, Joanna. Good for you.’ He looks at Mum. ‘Good for you.’

  She gives him her little smile. Her dressing gown’s unzipped too far, showing the yellow-looking dip between her tits. Usually she does the zip right up, because there’s no heating in the kitchen. And she isn’t wearing her normal slippers, the ones with the cream fur trim. She’s wearing the ones with curved heels and fluffy fronts. Dad bought her those one Christmas. ‘Whenever am I going to wear those, Dan?’ she’d asked him then.

  ‘Muesli, Jan, it’s the only way forward for the great British breakfast.’

  I twist myself free of Simon’s hand. Mum sits down next to him, crosses her legs. Lets a slipper dangle from her foot.

  ‘Wouldn’t you say, Joanna?’ The glass of his big watch winks at me. His watch is gold coloured. There’s loads of dials on the face, and at least four buttons on the side. I wonder what they all do, how many buttons and hands and dials you need to tell the time, and why he doesn’t have a digital, like everyone else.

  That night Mum’s jumpy all through tea, picking at her cardigan, twirling a bit of hair around her finger, getting up to look out the window. She doesn’t even put any food out for herself. She keeps dishing the beefburgers onto my plate, getting up and sliding another from under the grill as soon as I’ve finished one.

  She picks at a bit of bread without bothering to spread any marg on it.

  ‘Joanna.’

  I can tell she’s going to say something she thinks is important, because she starts off with my name.

  ‘I’ve got some news.’

  I chew on burger. I imagine how many cows it takes to stock the new Tesco’s with burgers. There’s cows in the fields beyond our village, but I’ve never looked at one up close. In the butcher’s round the corner sometimes you see half a cow hung up in the window. A side of beef. Two fat legs and bloody meat on the ribs. I’ve watched mince turn brown in the pan when Mum cooks it for mince and mash. Dad’s favourite. One minute it’s pink and soft, the next it’s brown and hard.

  ‘What news?’

  Before she can answer, his Volvo pulls up and she’s out the door, running down the path like he’s come home from the war. I go to the living room window and look out. Her flat brown hair flies out behind her as she runs to him. He gets out of the car and puts an arm round her. After he’s patted her on the arse, I hear him say, ‘Have
you told her?’

  Mum looks back at the house, so I duck down from the window and get back to my burger. I pick up a blackened chip and bite into it. It’s hard and sour.

  There’s a lot of banging as he brings his suitcases into the hallway. They feel the need to whisper as he does this. Bang, crash, whisper, whisper. Bags scrape along the wallpaper. We’ve got the bobbly stuff you paint over. Dad was good at that sort of thing, anything with ladders and brushes and screwdrivers. In the summer holidays he’d let me help, and when we sat down for our tea we’d both have paint in our hair. Once we painted my room all different colours: one wall blue, one red, the other white. It was Jubilee year.

  ‘Joanna. Simon’s here.’ Mum stands in the kitchen doorway, all pink up her neck. You can tell when she’s lying or embarrassed, because a pink blotch spreads right up her neck, and she puts her hand there to try to cover it up. But I can still see it. It runs up to her ears and over her jaw and onto both cheeks, like a spilled pot of blusher.

  I put down a cold chip and look at her. She wraps her cardigan around her middle. For a second I wonder if I should cry. Whether that would stop him.

  ‘Hi, Joanna. Remember me?’ He’s still wearing his raincoat, sticking one hand out towards me. That watch pokes through his cuff.

  ‘Of course I remember you. You were here this morning. At breakfast.’

  ‘That’s right! I’m the muesli king! How could you forget?’

  He looks at Mum, who nods. He takes a step closer and glances at my plate, still holding out a hand. ‘Shake?’

  I pick up the remains of my cold beefburger, dip it in the blob of tomato sauce, put it in my mouth, and chew.

  Mum touches his shoulder. ‘Simon. Why don’t you take the stuff upstairs?’

  He just stands there, though, arm extended and bobbing.

  ‘Joanna,’ he says, ‘Joanna, I’d like it if we could get off on the right foot.’ He pauses, flicks his fringe. ‘I’d really like that, Joanna.’ He smiles then, showing his small teeth, and I touch his outstretched fingers, just lightly.

  eight

  September, 1985

  When I get back from school, I don’t go in the kitchen. Mum’s in there, recipe book propped up on the Special Thing Simon’s bought to keep recipe books open (she never had a recipe book before, let alone a Special Thing), wooden spoon in hand, chopping board at the ready, probably weeping over the onions.

  ‘I’m cooking lasagne,’ she calls. I swing my bag across the living room floor. ‘It’s Italian,’ she continues. ‘Minced beef and big sheets of spaghetti. Nothing you won’t like.’

  She always cooks fancy things because she thinks he likes them, then tries to sell them to me with these descriptions. But I’ve seen him slide something greasy off his plate into the bin when she’s turned her back to pour him another glass of white wine. ‘I hope it’s dry, Jan,’ he’ll say. ‘Dry white’s the only wine worth a hangover.’

  I sit down on the sofa.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ she asks.

  ‘I’m going out tonight. Don’t bother with food.’ I open a copy of the Guardian, because it’s all there is to hand. He brought that into the house. I flick the pages. We never used to have a newspaper. Dad liked to watch ITN; Julia Somerville’s his favourite. ‘I’ll just catch the headlines,’ he’d say. Then it would be flicked over.

  Mum walks into the living room and stands behind the sofa. I can picture the shape of her lips exactly: stuck out as if she’s got a satsuma in her mouth. Biting on the pith. Probably one eye half closes as she says, ‘Fine,’ in a voice she’d like to think of as crisp. ‘Simon’s got a treat for you tonight though.’ She lets this one out as she walks back into the kitchen. But I don’t move from my spot on the sofa.

  ‘I think you’ll like it,’ she calls over a clattering of pans. She’s got these massive pans now. They went into Oxford and bought them together. When they came back they were cradling and rocking their Habitat bags as if they were newborns.

  I don’t reply.

  ‘I think you’ll like it, Joanna.’ She comes into the living room and sits on my newspaper.

  ‘I’m trying to read.’

  ‘I know you don’t read that.’ She lowers her voice. ‘And I don’t bloody blame you.’ She sticks a long finger into my forearm and wiggles it. ‘Women’s Page. Hasn’t even got any make-up on it.’

  She smells of perming lotion. She had it done a few days ago. It makes her face look like a tiny dot in a mass of scribble, like something one of the first years would do in Art. Simon didn’t say anything when she showed him, twirling round, patting it with her flattened palm, making a light crunching sound.

  ‘What’s the treat, then?’ I ask, not looking up.

  ‘You’ll see,’ she says, wiggling her finger in my forearm again.

  When he comes in he’s grinning. He’s wearing a big raincoat. He thinks it’s sexy, this brown mac with a belt. You can tell by the way he never just hangs it on the peg in the hall. Instead he shakes it out with a huge flap, smoothes it over one arm and takes it upstairs to hang it on a wooden coat hanger.

  He stands there with his big grin and big rainmac, making a big thing about keeping one arm behind his back.

  ‘Hi honey, I’m home!’ he shouts, like he always does, in a fake American accent, and she laughs, like she always does, floating into the living room in her Delia Smith pinny. ‘What’s for tea?’ he says. ‘I like a little woman in the kitchen.’ He gives me a wink. ‘And any other room of her choice.’

  ‘Lasagne tonight, darling.’ She plonks a big kiss on his mouth.

  ‘My favourite. Apart from you, that is.’

  They snog.

  ‘Joanna!’ he calls, swooping over. ‘I have something which I think may lead you to abandon your sulk, if only for a few moments.’ I can smell his aftershave as he leans over the back of the sofa. It’s one of those expensive ones that still smells cheap. He sticks out his lower lip and breathes over me. ‘Don’t you want to know what I’ve bought for you?’

  Mum stands there, arms folded across her pinny.

  ‘I hope you like it.’ And he brings his arm round in front of him and places a Walkman in my lap.

  ‘I’ve taken the liberty of including one of my favourite recordings. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.’

  ‘You are wonderful, Simon,’ says Mum, hugging him. ‘Isn’t he? Isn’t he just wonderful, Joanna?’

  But she’s not even looking at me as she asks this question.

  part three

  one

  Howard

  September, 1985

  Robert and Paul were friends for quite a few years, and, looking back on it, it seems strange that I didn’t take action before I did. By the time they were fifteen, the two of them were wearing the same outfits, singing the same songs, smelling of the same shower gel and deodorant.

  After the London trip, we didn’t invite Paul on any more birthday outings. I managed to avoid seeing him very often, as Robert would go round to Paul’s house after school on most days, leaving us looking at the clock, waiting for our son’s return.

  Then one day Kathryn suggested that Paul should come for Sunday lunch.

  On the Saturday afternoon after work, she went to Hughes’s and bought a whole chicken. Usually we had pieces, as Kathryn doesn’t like the bones, but on that Saturday she came home from the library with a carrier bag full of bird dangling from her handlebars. I didn’t say anything as she rinsed it under the tap and stored it in the fridge, a bloody piece of kitchen towel beneath, ready for his arrival.

  As always, I spent Sunday morning in the garden. The metal of the secateurs was cool on my knuckles as I cut back the chrysanthemums. It no longer pained me to cut things back fiercely. When I’d started gardening, I’d worried that I would go in too hard, overdo it, cut off my chances entirely with those stubby blades. But I was wiser now; things always came back, and they came back all the better for being cut down.

  ‘Hello, Mr Hall.’
/>
  Paul stood above me, shielding his eyes from the watery sun. His jacket was bright blue; his training shoes were bright white. Both looked as though they had been pumped full of air.

  Robert wasn’t far behind. ‘Let’s go inside,’ I heard him say to Paul.

  But Paul ignored him. ‘Doing some gardening?’

  ‘Pruning.’ I clipped off another stalk.

  Paul stroked a pimple on his chin and waited for more.

  ‘Dad’s always gardening,’ said Robert. He touched the gold chain he’d taken to wearing around his neck and looked at Paul. They were about the same height, but now Robert was the more solid-looking. His arms and legs no longer seemed stretched; it was as if they had always been that size. They were settled into their pattern of striding and swinging, swinging and striding.

  ‘My mum says you’ve got the best garden in the street, Mr Hall,’ said Paul.

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ Robert said again.

  ‘She says you must be obsessed with gardening.’ Paul grinned down at me.

  ‘Robert liked gardening, when he was younger,’ I said.

  Paul let out a hoot of laughter. For a minute I wished I hadn’t said anything, but to my surprise Robert didn’t flinch; he just stared at Paul until his outbreak of mirth passed.

  Eventually Paul looked down at the grass.

  ‘He was very good at it, too,’ I said.

  ‘Dad,’ said Robert, with a small smile, ‘Paul’s not interested in that.’

  I straightened up. ‘Well. You boys should wash your hands. I expect dinner’s nearly ready.’

  As she took the tray of sizzling potatoes from the oven, Kathryn’s face was flushed and damp. Through the oven door, I could see the bird cooking in its juices.

  ‘Lay the table for me?’ she said, turning the potatoes in the hot fat.

  I arranged the table as I usually did, but when she saw it she frowned. ‘No placemats?’

  We only have placemats at Christmas and birthdays. We do have a full set – a wedding present; the transfers depict birds of the British Isles.